


All That's Best of Dark and Bright

by pokeasleepingsmaug



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Slow Burn, Tam Lin-inspired, except more like 'suspicious of each other' to accomplices to friends to lovers, kjartan has a secret and also is a bastard, like a low-key enemies to lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28013238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pokeasleepingsmaug/pseuds/pokeasleepingsmaug
Summary: Sihtric, laughing, grabs her hands and spins her until she's dizzy, until her breath catches in her throat when she looks up at him. He's smiling down at her, eyes so warm and full of light that Eahlswith's heart thunders in her chest. "I figured it out--the secret to Kjartan's power." He hesitates, biting his lip, and all Eahlswith can think is how his lips would feel beneath her own. "But I need help. I need you to come to Dunholm with me."Eahlswith's stomach drops, the wind in the trees suddenly threatening, but one look at Sihtric's face, and she knows she can deny him nothing, not even thisAs if sensing her fear, he cups her cheek gently. "I promise to keep you safe."Eahlswith nods. "To Dunholm, then."
Relationships: Ealhswith/Sihtric (The Last Kingdom)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 23





	1. silver beads and sunlight

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written a longfic in a while, so bear with me! I'm hoping to update once every week or two, and I hope you guys enjoy!

Eahlswith hates traveling with this rowdy, ragtag company of Danes a little less each day. None have bothered her, there is plenty to keep her hands busy, and even the sounds of them snoring and farting in their sleep is beginning to sound more reassuring than annoying. Besides, smelly as fighting men on a march can be, most of them make it a point to wash once a week, or sometimes more if the weather is hot and the day’s work is particularly strenuous. 

She sometimes says her prayers and sometimes not, and she is still not sure if she forgives God. She doesn’t think he much cares for her opinion of him, anyway, and if a few missed prayers are enough to send her soul to hell, maybe heaven isn’t a place worth striving for. 

They have been camping on the edge of Kjartan the Cruel’s lands for a few days now, and Eahlswith dreads the day they will pick up and begin to move closer. Kjartan must know they’re nearby--Eahlswith was a child when he took Dunholm, she knows he is a fearful, paranoid man, obsessed only with his own power and the threats to it. Even the thought of moving closer to the fortress, and closer to the burnt plot of land her family’s farm once stood upon, is enough to turn her stomach. 

Instead, she seeks out Brida every day after breakfast, determined to put her restless hands to good use. Eventually there will be a battle, and Eahlswith spends her days learning as much as she can about healing. Brida knows which herbs will stem bleeding and which will slow the march of putrification, she knows the broths to make to calm a fever and which gods may be swayed to ease the suffering of men. 

Eahlswith is skeptical of the gods, but she holds the knowledge as close as any Brida tells her, listens to her tales with rapt attention as they grind herbs to powder or hang them upside down to dry. Every day, she feels more and more at home among this company of fur-clad men with merry eyes and silver rings glittering on their arms, and every day, she tries not to turn her attention to the dark smudge of Dunholm low on the horizon. 

She has settled into a some semblance of a life here, even if it is a life like nothing she ever imagined. There is a comfort to the rhythm of her days, a familiarity growing between her and the men of the army, a tentative friendship blossoming between her and Brida. Eahlswith finds, that for all the priests and the wives in the market whispered of the ferocity of the pagan Danes, that they are a merry folk. These men are nothing like Kjartan’s, and for that, she is grateful.

“Eahlswith,” Brida calls, her voice calm and warm one early morning. Eahlswith straightens and offers Brida a bowl of the porridge she’d been preparing for a large group of grateful men nearby, but Brida waves it away. “Some of Ragar’s men are complaining of fever. What should we use to calm it?”

The men nearby shuffle uneasily, glancing among themselves with shifting gazes. It is no secret that illness can rip through an army in days. Several of them nervously touch the hammers hanging around their necks, the way her father would grab his cross. The way Eahlswith would grab hers, had she not thrown it into the woods the day everything changed. The answer comes to Eahlswith’s lips effortlessly. “Coriander. I know where some grows nearby.”

“Can you gather it? I’ll use up almost all of my supply this morning. And some mint, too, if you can find it.” Brida tilts her head thoughtfully, considering the clouds in the sky. “And comfrey.”

Eahlswith nods, hauling the large iron pot off the hook over the fire and setting it among the circle of men. Full bellies will keep them from thinking about the fever, at least for a moment. “I’ll go now. Are Uhtred and Ragnar going to move the army today?”

Brida shakes her head, the silver in her hair catching the sunlight. Eahlswith pauses to admire how lovely it looks against her dark hair, and wishes she had a bead or two to braid into her own. How plain she must look among these Danes, with their arm-rings and their hair-beads and their elaborate braids. She has only the simple green dress she was wearing when she fled the ruins of her family’s farm, and a red one Uhtred found for her among their piles of plunder. 

She pulls her dark hair into a hurried braid over her shoulder as she rises from her knees before the fire. “Becoming more Dane than Saxon now, Eahlswith!” Audun calls good-naturedly, jerking his chin toward her braid. “We’ll have you in a shield-wall yet!”

“And if I’m in a shield-wall, who’s going to stitch your hand back to your arm?” She taunts, to a chorus of laughs from the rest of the men. 

Even Audun smiles, his blue eyes glimmering, and tilts his head to acknowledge her point. “Off with you, then!” He pauses, face going serious, as he squints into the distance toward Dunholm. “Should be far enough away that you’ll be safe. He’ll know we’re here, his men will be cowering behind their walls.”

Eahlswith nods, trying to ignore the clenching of her stomach as she fetches a basket and heads toward the woods. Coriander likes a bit of shade, and there’s a meadow only about an hour’s brisk walk that’s sunny in the morning and shaded in the afternoon. Her mother used to send her to gather coriander from there, before Eahlswith got tired of the chore and brought some back to plant in their garden. 

As Eahlswith steps into the shade, she realizes this is the first time she’s been alone since the army found her, soot-stained and tear-streaked, blood in her hair and on her hands and staining her teeth red. She pushes these thoughts to the side and tries not to imagine Kjartan’s men hiding in the shadows behind every tree. Audun is right. Kjartan will know they’re nearby, and will be terrified. He always lets his enemies come to him, to break their armies on his high walls. Eahlswith has never known him to leave the fortress, although his son, Sven the One-Eye, sometimes does. He always leaves burned homes and ruined lives in his wake, and Eahlswith hopes his fearful father is keeping him home. 

Eahlswith tries to pay attention to anything but thoughts of Sven, his leering, ugly face and matted blond hair, the horrible sound of his mocking laughter. Instead she listens to the birds and the wind in the leaves and watches the play of sunlight on the ground. By the time she reaches the clearing, she has almost forgotten why she should be wary.

The meadow was a farm, once, she thinks, long before the Danes came. A crumbling well stands near a few rotten, blackened beams that must be the remnants of the house, and the abundance of herbs growing wild here hints that there was once a garden. Eahlswith does not let herself imagine what became of the inhabitants of this place. 

She rounds a tree and the meadow comes into view, and Eahlswith’s belly drops when she spies a half-dozen cattle scattered throughout the meadow, grazing contendly in the midmorning light. They look like they belong here, like they’ve always been here, and if Eahlswith hadn’t been here countless times before and always found it empty, she would be soothed by the sight of them. 

She creeps slowly toward the clearing, keeping to the shadows as best she can, thankful she is not a Dane and does not have silver in her hair to catch the sunlight and give her away. She is nearly to the clearing when a hand lands on her shoulder.

Eahlswith screams, startling the cows into lifting their heads, and scrambles away. The hand releases its hold on her instantly, and she spins to ward off her attacker. 

He stands just a foot away from her, hands raised, palms out, and he looks as surprised as Eahlswith feels. The sunlight and shadows dapple his pale skin and the sharp planes of his cheeks and jaw. There is no spark of silver on his arms or in his black hair, no sword at his hip or shield on his back, but there is no mistaking him for anything but a Dane.


	2. elflaedsson

“You shouldn’t be here,” he mutters, his gaze flitting between Eahlswith and where Dunholm rises like a stain on the horizon. “It’s not safe.” His eyes fall on her again, a frown creasing his brows as he looks her over. He almost seems to dismiss her, to decide offhand that she’s no threat. He starts back into the meadow, and tosses over his shoulder at her, “you should leave.”

It makes Eahlswith’s blood boil, and she snorts. “And who are you to keep me from this place? No one owns it.” Traveling with the army of Danes must have made her bolder, or maybe the knowledge that no matter what he does, it can’t be any worse than what Sven did to her. Either way, Eahlswith is shocked at her own nerve. She’s not the same shy girl she was two months ago. 

“Kjartan does,” the Dane counters sharply, stopping in his tracks to turn and stare at her, and Eahlswith’s stomach drops into her toes. She’s lived in Kjartan’s lands since he came to power, she knows the stories. Knows why people call him the Cruel, has seen it firsthand: bodies strung up in the marketplace, men with missing hands and women with bellies swelling against their wills. 

Some survival instinct screams in her blood, and despite her earlier tough talk, Eahlswith’s palms begin to sweat. “Going to drag me back to Dunholm so his one-eyed bastard can finish what he started, then?” She’s proud that her voice doesn’t waver.

The man’s face is inscrutable. The quirk of his lips hints at faint amusement, but it does not reach his eyes. There is only an emptiness there, and Eahlswith thinks she should have chosen her words better. “His bastard certainly hasn’t laid either of his two eyes on you before this moment.”

Eahlswith nearly drops her basket. This man looks nothing like Sven--he’s leaner, darker, all sharp edges and the promise of swift grace. She does not know which of them favors their father since he never leaves his walls, and she is not quite sure she believes him. Rumors fly, even in whispers, and a second son of the ruthless Dane who rules here would be common knowledge, if he existed. “Kjartan has only one son.” 

“One son that he is proud to call his own, perhaps,” the Dane says mildly, meeting her eyes with a faint, fleeting smile, “and one son who would demand payment from a pretty girl for straying into his father’s lands uninvited.”

Eahlswith starts into the meadow, stepping around one of the cows to head for the patch of coriander. “And which of those sons are you?” She cannot stand to look at this man anymore, with his half-veiled threats and his eyes that feel like they see too much. She wants to return to camp, but she sees no weapons on this Dane, and so she fears the sickness more than she fears him. 

“They are the same son.” 

Eahlswith jumps at how close his voice is. She didn’t hear his footsteps swishing through the long grass, but she glances over her shoulder and confirms that he’s followed her toward the crumbling, moss-covered stones of the old well. She drops her basket at her feet.

She wheels to face him, planting her hands on her hips and meeting his gaze with exaggerated calm. “Then which son are you?” She says each word succinctly, letting them land precisely between the two of them. “I will not ask again.” She is proud of how bold she sounds, how sure. Maybe Audun is right, and this army will make a Dane of her yet. She is not sure if she relishes the idea or hates it.

“Not the one Kjartan is proud to call his own,” he answers with a shrug, as though the answer is obvious. “But you already know that I am not Sven.”

“Then who are you, Kjartansson?”

He flinches as if she’s slapped him, his eyes narrowing as they land on her. “Elflaedsson.” His voice is soft, a hint of threat simmering just below the surface. 

“Elflaedsson,” Eahlswith repeats, hands out in surrender. “Do you know where comfrey grows by the river?” He nods silently, but is otherwise still. “Be useful and fetch me some, then. We cannot attack your father’s fortress with an army of sick men.” She does not know where she found the nerve to bait him like this, but something about him feels safe in a way Eahlswith cannot define. She has seen men who crave violence, who lord what little power they have over others to make themselves feel mighty. Eahlswith grew up in the lands of a man like that, she lives among an army of them now. He is not a man like that. 

He starts slowly toward the edge of the meadow, but pauses at the boundary of field and forest. “Kjartan’s walls will never fall,” he says softly, bitterly, and Eahlswith would feel those words like blows to her chest if a cow had not chosen that moment to rest her large head against Elflaedsson’s shoulder. He scratches her briefly between the eyes, and is gone in the space between blinks. 

Eahlswith picks the coriander and mint, which grow so close together that she knows this was once a garden. When she’s finished, she rocks back onto her heels and dusts her hands off on her green skirt. She knows she should leave this meadow and return to the army before the man who claims to be Kjartan’s son returns at the head of an army of his own, but she cannot quite bring herself to leave. 

If she has to die here, waiting for comfrey that will probably never come, at least her final moments will be spent in sunlight, among the warm smell of cows and grass and freshly picked mint. At least the last person she spoke to will be a man who does not seem to glory in violence. It is more than she ever dared to hope for. 

Eahlswith has nearly given up on the Dane returning when he does just that. He drops two fistfuls of comfrey into her basket, and offers a dusty hand to pull her to her feet. She hesitates, but his hand is warm and strong when it enfolds hers in its grip. “Comfrey, to heal the men that hope to destroy Kjartan.” There’s an edge of steel in his voice that shocks Eahlswith, that makes her grip his hand tighter for just a moment.

When she’s on her feet, he releases her hand and fixes her with a steady gaze. “I should tell you not to come back. I am the only one, in all Kjartan’s hall, that will not demand a price for letting you go freely.”

Eahlswith inclines her head in acknowledgement, happy to have a moment’s reprieve from the intensity of his gaze. She lifts her head and tries to speak, but gets carried away in the strangeness of his eyes: the shifting colors, the way being pinned in their sight feels a bit too much like drowning. She clears her throat and forces herself to relax, to smile a little. “I would expect no less from a son of Elflaed.”

His smile is so full and bright that it surprises her, and she can’t stop herself from smiling back. “You should not come back, but I will be here if you do.”

She stoops to pick up her basket. There should be enough to soothe fevers for a quarter of the army, and Eahlswith should not hope the illness spreads easily, but she does. She gives the son of Elflaed a jaunty wave and a smile, and it is not until she reaches the edge of the camp that she realizes how long she’s been gone. 

Audun and a half-dozen others are saddled up and just departing when they spot her emerging from the woods, and Audun swings down from his horse and grips her upper arms so firmly it almost hurts. “Eahlswith,” he breathes, looking her quickly over. “Are you hurt? You should not be on your own so long, it is not safe.”

Eahlswith rolls her eyes and shakes off his hands. “So I heard.” She steps around him. “I’ll still have your dinner ready in time, as long as Brida doesn’t need me.” 

She finds Brida conferring with Ragnar near their tent, Uhtred sharpening his sword as he listens to their argument with half an ear. He smiles absently at Eahlswith, raising his brows at the basket tucked against her hip. 

“We need more information before we attack the fortress, Ragnar, and healthy men!” Brida hisses, gesturing vaguely at the camp. “We need to stay here until we are sure the sickness will not spread!”

“We need to strike before he has time to hire mercenaries and gather reinforcements!” 

“We know nothing about Dunholm!” Brida counters hotly, snatching the basket from Eahlswith and rummaging through it impatiently. She nods quickly at Eahlswith, brows wrinkled and eyes stormy, and Eahlswith does not want to be the target of the ire meant for Ragnar. “I expected more, if it took you so long.”

“I met a Dane,” Eahlswith answers with a shrug. Uhtred looks up from his sword, interested, as she continues. “He claims to be a son of Kjartan.”

Uhtred is already sheathing his sword by the time Eahlswith can continue, Ragnar cursing and wringing his hands, his blue eyes full of pity as they rest on her. “Eahlswith, I am sorry, we should have sent a man with you. Sven is almost as cruel as his fat--”

Brida cuts him off with a quick swat to the back of the head. “Does this look like a woman who’s been raped to you, Ragnar? Whoever this son of Kjartan was, it wasn’t Sven.” Brida bites her lip and looks Eahlwith over appraisingly. “We need information on Dunholm, on Kjartan. Do you think he will give it to us?”

Her mouth suddenly dry, Eahlswith isn’t capable of more than a shrug.

Uhtred, smiling, clasps a warm hand on Eahlswith’s shoulder. “So it is settled. Eahlswith befriends Kjartan’s son,” Uhtred rolls his eyes, and Eahlswith is surprised at her own anger, “and get information from him.” He shrugs, shooting her a smile, and Eahlswith has never wanted to punch him so badly. 

She should not want to. Uhtred has been mostly kind to her, aside from a few snide remarks, but she knows that Uhtred looks down on her. She knows it isn’t personal, either, that Uhtred looks down on most women of low birth, unless they are far prettier or stronger than she is. It is not an uncommon thing, among either Dane or Saxon, and maybe it is more so for Uhtred, a man who does not know where he belongs, if he is Saxon or Dane. Maybe that is all he feels he has left to himself.

Eahlswith finds herself thinking that maybe she should pity him instead, this lost little lord who can’t quite find a place in the world, but she can’t. It is hard to pity a man with a sword and silver and men who do his bidding, the lost heir to a fortress in the north, a man born of blood so fine he puts most others to shame. It is hard to pity a man who thinks the world or his gods owe him something, because the only thing Eahlswith ever expected from her god was justice, and so far, he has denied her even that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just feel like a little brewing conflict between Eahlswith and Uhtred is realistic, but also I may be projecting. Oh well.


	3. a thousand times over

Sihtric cannot sleep. He tosses and turns on the narrow mat he calls a bed in the too-warm stone room just off the kitchen. Usually he finds this place comforting--warmed from the kitchen fires, full of the soft, steady breathing and light snoring of the women who work there, the occasional grunt when a dreaming child kicks their mother. 

A dozen people, give or take, share this room, and Sihtric usually feels safe here. He has slept here since he was a child sharing a blanket with his mother, and sometimes he still dreams of her on the nights when he sleeps here. He supposes it is silly; she has been dead for nearly seven years. She does not linger here, and he is glad for that. But he has become something like a son or brother to every woman in this room, and there is nothing he would not do for them. 

They sneak him bits of extra bread when none of his father’s men are around, they fuss over how tall he is now, how the hollows of his cheeks have not quite filled out, how driving the cattle and learning to fight in secret lessons with Tekil have packed muscle onto his lean frame. He does what little he can to make their lives easier, bringing them berries and plants he finds outside the walls, walking with them between the kitchen and the well when it’s dark outside, bandaging burns and other minor wounds, but it never feels like enough. 

It is worse tonight, when he is haunted by visions of warm brown eyes beneath slanted brows and a serious mouth that never quite quirked up into a real smile, the smell of freshly picked mint and something like sympathy in his chest. He was so distracted that he was late getting back and then dawdled through his chores, and didn’t return to the kitchen in time to walk Hilde to the well. She still hasn’t returned, and his stomach is full of vipers. If he wasn’t going to protect Hilde, the least he could have done was scared the woman from the meadow enough to keep her far from Dunholm. 

He is never enough of a man to do the things he should. 

Sihtric’s sour mood drives him to stand, stepping carefully over sleeping bodies. He does not want to be here when Hilde walks in and takes her place by the fire, or when she goes to Rhona in the morning for the mixture of herbs to stop a seed from rooting in her belly. Bile burns his throat at the thought. No, better to sleep with the cattle in their byre, better to skip breakfast than look one of his failures in the face. 

The early summer night air is cool and soothing against his too-hot face, and Sihtric breathes it deep and tries to feel it all the way into his toes. The stars are large and bright overhead, and maybe Sihtric will just sit outside the byre and wait for the sun to rise. He does that sometimes on nights when he cannot sleep, when nightmares plague him and all he hears in his head is screaming. 

He remembers the stories his mother told him, the names of the stars she pointed out, how she told him that owls and eagles and rabbits are his friends, and monsters that walk the night are not. He still fears them sometimes, but on nights like tonight, he is willing to face all the legions of his mother’s hell just to escape the doom in his own skull. 

He sits with his back against the byre for only a few scant moments before he scares himself with images of slender fingers tying knots in his hair if he falls asleep, of sly smiles full of too-sharp teeth. He tosses a fearful glance over his shoulder before he closes the door behind him, unsure if he should clutch the wooden hammer around his neck or make the sign of the cross like his mother did. He holds the hammer with one hand and crosses himself with the other, because Sihtric will call on any god that decides to listen. 

The byre is quiet, full of straw and warmth, and Sihtric finally thinks he’ll be able to sleep tonight. There is something comforting about the smell of straw and the deep breathing of sleepy cattle that always makes him tired, too It is not until he enters the empty stall in the back corner that he sometimes sleeps in that he knows peace will not be for him tonight. 

She is curled up on her side, her back to him, head cradled on her arm, hair loose from her usual braid. He hopes she’s sleeping, that he will be able to comfort himself with the warmth of her and the smell of her hair and hate himself for failing her all at once. He slips down into the straw behind her and tosses an arm lightly over her shoulders, tucking his cloak around them both. 

It is only when he feels the rise and fall of her breath that he realizes she’s crying in that way he’s only seen women like his mother do: almost entirely silent, nothing to give them away but tears and the unsteady rhythm of their breathing. “I’ve got you,” he whispers into the warm skin at the base of her neck, breathing in the sharp scent of fear clinging to her sweaty hair. 

“It was Kjartan,” she tells him, so softly he thinks he may have imagined it. 

He tightens his grip around her shoulders, wishing he could take the torment from her chest into his, knowing the terrible tightness that lives there, feeling it in the tremor of her shoulders against his chest. Of all the women here, she is the closest thing he has to family without his mother, and he is never strong enough to protect the few people he loves, his hands always too small to contain all the hurt he wants to heal. 

There has been an emptiness in him since the day he heard his mother scream under the shredding teeth of hounds, an anger that simmers just below the surface of his skin, and he does not know how to bend it to his will, but he will find a way. “I will be his undoing, Hilde. I swear it.”

He cannot tell if the sound that comes from her is a sob or a bitter little chuckle. “The walls will not fall, Sihtric.” The same words he told the woman in the meadow this morning, and there is a part of him that believes it. 

“I will tear them down with my own hands.” 

She presses a kiss to the knuckles of one of the hands in question. “Don’t become like him. Promise me that, instead.” Her breath is warm and wet against his fingers, and he hates himself for not walking her to the well. He knows that if Kjartan was really intent on having her, he could have done nothing to stop it, but it is easier to think he failed her than to admit he never could have protected her at all.

“A thousand times over. But I will still be his undoing.”

She rolls over in his arm, her face red and hazel eyes puffy, and all Sihtric wants is to bring her outside the walls with him tomorrow, to find the girl from the meadow and make her promise to take Hilde to her army, to take her as far away as she can possibly go. 

Hilde’s voice is steady when she speaks, breath warm against his cheek. “You cannot keep both promises, Sihtric, and I think you know it.”

“I will find a way. There’s an army, outside the walls--”

“He will kill you first,” Hilde tells him bluntly, “and I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t,” Sihtric promises, for the third time that night, and somewhere in the dark below the root of the tree of the world, a woman neither old nor young selects a new thread for her weaving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Sihtric angst and the accidental beginnings of what might be a poly-ship? Sorry not sorry. I thought I was writing this story, but it had other plans.


	4. a strong, simple spell

Sihtric is aware of Hilde’s warmth before anything else, and he buries his face in the crook of her neck and breathes her in with a sigh of contentment. He feels, more than hears, her soft hum of disgust. “You’re sweaty,” she yawns, batting at his shoulder half-heartedly. She takes a few moments to untangle herself from his grasp and Sihtric whines, cold at every place they’d just been touching. 

He opens his eyes to stare balefully at her as she picks straw out of her golden hair and pulls it back into a hurried braid. Sihtric yanks his cloak tighter around himself and tries to ignore the waves of cold washing over him, the way his muscles quake against his will and his teeth would be chattering if he wasn’t clenching his jaw. She smiles down at him and nudges him lightly with a booted toe. “We’ll miss breakfast if you don’t get up.”

“Too cold to be hungry,” Sihtric mutters, unwilling to confront the prospect of leaving his nest in the byre. The cows are beginning to stamp restlessly in the stalls nearby, and he knows he can’t ignore them for much longer. He wants to groan at the thought, but he only yawns instead. The worries of last night feel so far away when the early sunlight slants into the byre and Hilde’s accustomed cheerful mask is in place, and Sihtric doesn’t know if the sunlight or her smile is brighter.

“Cold?” Hilde asks, a line appearing between her fair brows. Her hand rests light as a whisper on his cheek, his forehead, the side of his neck. “Fever,” she proclaims, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “Someone else will have to tend the cattle today.”

“No!” He sits up quickly, dizziness, cold, and fear all engaged in a nauseating battle in his belly, bile rising up his throat. He leans over and spits it into the straw, shuddering, as his stomach roils and the muscles under his chin tighten. He breathes deep through his nose as the nausea passes, wishing he had water to wash the sour burning taste from his mouth, and shakes his head. “I’m the only one allowed outside the walls, he’ll punish me if I send someone else.”

“Sihtric,” Hilde sighs but doesn’t argue, reaching over to rub his temples the way she knows he likes. His tight muscles relax under her gentle fingers. She doesn’t say that she wishes she could keep him in bed all day, give him tea to keep him warm, rub his head to relax him, curl up behind him and let her warmth soothe him to sleep. She doesn’t need to, her desire for that is plain in the shining of her eyes and the way she shakes her head before she bends down to press her lips to his forehead. “Take my cloak, then, so you’ll be warm enough, and I’ll have tea ready for you when you return.”

It’s an admission that she’s just as powerless as he is, that they’re subject to the whims of Kjartan and she knows he’s right. The thought makes him feel sicker than the fever. He takes the cloak when she offers it and sits up to clasp it over his own. He offers her a small smile, then heaves himself to his feet with a groan. He aches in his very bones, but the dizziness from earlier doesn’t return. Hilde wraps him in a tight hug and kisses his cheek, her lips lingering against his skin, before she hurries into the sunlight without a word. Usually he would ache to see her go, but he already aches, and he can’t tell the difference between illness and affection this morning. 

He slowly herds the cattle out of the walls, and thankfully, they know the way to the meadow without him having to guide them. He walks along slowly behind them, reveling in the way the sun warms him by degrees, thankful for Hilde’s extra cloak. The woods are calm and warm by the time he reaches the meadow, and he leans against a tree and allows himself to drift off to sleep. He knows the cattle won’t go far, they like this little meadow almost as much as he does. 

He’s awoken sometime later by an insistent hand shaking his shoulder, and he forces his eyes open with a sigh. He’s greeted by concerned brown eyes and a full, frowning mouth, dark hair tumbling forward around her face as she bends over him. “You’re ill,” she tells him, almost accusing, and Sihtric actually laughs at her tone. 

She glares at him, bent over and yanking fresh herbs from the patch a few feet from his tree. He hadn’t even realized he’d settled near the coriander, and wonders if it was some subconscious instinct that drove him here--to the herb that soothes fever. “I’m going to make you tea,” she tells him, and is gone before he can tell her Hilde will have tea waiting for him when he returns to Dunholm. 

He looks quickly around the meadow and finds all the cows still there, just like he’d known they would be, and the woman’s back as she kneels a few feet away from him, coaxing a small fire into existence. He admires her practicality--the confident way she moves as she sets about boiling water and grinding herbs, the small smudge of green that appears just above her eyebrow when she wipes sweat away. The sight fills his chest; he cannot tell if he wants to wipe it away or simply enjoy it longer. 

She looks up when she feels his eyes on her, shooting him a small smile. “Coriander seeds and willow bark,” she informs him, pouring water from her waterskin into the small wooden bowl she ground them in. She sets the bowl next to the fire, as close as she can get it without burning it, and gives him a wry look. “It won’t be proper tea because it won’t boil, but it will work the same.” She sits back on her haunches and eyes him speculatively. “You should not be out when you are ill, Elflaedsson.”

“Sihtric,” he corrects her, too tired to keep his walls as high as Dunholm’s. He can build them back up later. “My name is Sihtric, and I had to come. Kjartan would have sent someone else, and I could not stomach the thought of them finding you here.”

She turns away to check the tea, but he sees the surprise in her eyes, and wonders why it’s there. Does she find it so strange that he would care if she came to harm? “Sihtric.” She rolls the name around on her tongue, tilting her head as she considers it. Finally, she nods as if she approves, and hands him the wooden bowl from beside the fire. 

The wood is hot between his palms, the rising steam smelling lightly of roasted nuts. He closes his eyes and breathes it deep before he brings the bowl to his lips. The first sip warms him all the way from mouth to toes, and he sighs as he tips his head back to rest against the tree. “Thank you,” he murmurs, opening his eyes to look at her. 

She smiles briefly, but does not glance his way. Sihtric notes the shredded grass on her lap, the methodical way her graceful fingers tear the tender green shoots to pieces, and he does not know how to put her at ease. She seems like a woman who cannot be still, and he wonders what it is that she’s running from. He knows that impulse, lives with it every day, and he wishes for her all the freedom that he does not dare to wish for himself. 

Sihtric is content to sit here with her in silence, among the waving grasses and the first bloom of wildflowers. He is accustomed to silence, thrives in it, and has learned to hear all the things that people do not say in its space. There are shades to silence that those who talk too much can never guess at, and he hears them all. He hears her restless nature in the sound of roots loosening from the earth as she gathers herbs, understands that she is no stranger to silence because she does not feel the need to break it. 

He sips the quickly cooling tea, and finds himself wishing he had some bread for the first time all morning. He briefly considers asking his quiet companion, but her brow is furrowed in concentration and her tongue is poking out through her lips, and Sihtric does not want to disturb her. He is accustomed to hunger, anyway. 

She must feel his eyes on her, because it is only a few seconds before she sits back on her haunches and glances at him. He had simply been watching her, trying to learn all the secrets her voice will not tell but her body may, and he hadn’t thought she might catch him at it. He is usually so skilled in observation that he can do it unnoticed. He smiles, and her lips quirk up quickly in response. 

“Have you eaten today? Our men haven’t been hungry until after they drink the tea.” Sihtric nearly jumps at the sound of her voice, the slightly husky quality of it, the way she’s pitched her words softer than earlier, like she’s been enjoying the silence too, like she doesn’t want to be the one to break it. 

“I can gather some raspberries,” he answers, jerking his chin toward the bush at the edge of the clearing, knowing it isn’t really an answer. 

She knows it, too, and he can see the smile playing with the corners of her lips. “Someday you’ll speak plainly to me even when you aren’t ill. Fetch the berries, then.” She waves him away and reaches into her pack to pull out half a loaf of bread and some dried meat. Sihtric grabs the wooden bowl he’d drank from and stands, not even feeling the urge to groan this time, and wonders if it’s her tea or simply her that has him feeling better. He wonders if there’s some magic in her hands, in her voice, capable of chasing away an illness. There will never come a day when he isn’t awestruck by healers, by women, by the strong, simple spell that can be cast when someone cares.

His nimble fingers easily avoid the thorns, and he fills the bowl within a few minutes and walks back to the woman. He drops down in front of her and places the bowl in her lap, and maybe he doesn’t draw his hand back from the riml as quickly as he should. Instead, he leans forward, a small smile on his lips, and pins her beneath the full weight of his gaze. “Do you have a name, or should I call you the queen of faeries?”

She laughs, clear and bright, and Sihtric smiles as he waits for her answer. “If you’re looking for magic, you’ll be sorely disappointed.” He does not correct her, does not even quirk a brow, simply lets her continue even though he knows the magic within her. If she is capable of getting him to speak plainly, then he will show her the power she carries. One task is as impossible as the other. “My name is Eahlswith.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no editing we die like men.


End file.
